Saturday, November 14, 2015

A Response to 11/13/15

Before I saw the charcoal sketch of the Eiffel tower in the peace sign,
or the line drawing of the Statue of
Liberty hugging the Eiffel tower,
I cut out paper hearts and stuck them like tears to a lamp. Not elegant or memorable, but helpful all the same.

For all my pastor friends out there struggling to
start a
sermon or
adapt a sermon or
decide whether or not to
rewrite the sermon they
wrote earlier in the week:

In a world where

a Lebanese father tackles
a suicide bomber in Beirut (and the detonation kills him and his little
daughter but saves hundreds) and his heroism goes largely unnoticed in the western world;[1]

a U.S. police officer’s
death is ruled a suicide [2] but, before the facts were known, ex-law enforcement people and pundits
blamed “Black Lives Matter” rhetoric[3];

Sikh gurdwaras in Paris open
their doors to stranded tourists[4]
but the American Cathedral in Paris closed for the day[5];

a Missouri student protests
racism on campus by going on a hunger strike[6]
and on the same campus, athletes use their power to bring about a
university president’s resignation[7];

an Illinois student who is
transgender is finally allowed access to the appropriate restroom and a
city councilor 2,000 miles away[8]
responds by explaining violence is the solution to transgender and Muslim
problems;

and people who treat the
internet as their pulpit call for killing/deporting/locking up Muslims, despite
Christianity’s history of violence across continents, cultures, and
centuries;

meanness, fear, ignorance, and spectacle seem to rule the
week
and our ordinary tasks of ministry are dwarfed by the world’s
sadness.

So I remind myself and you that our call as pastors is

to
preach the gospel;

to tell the Jesus-stories full of courage and confusion and challenge;
to lament with the families of the fallen in Paris and
Lebanon;